College Students! discussion

For February we are going to have a category 1 anything goes book and our category 2 is "Mystery/Crime".

-Only one nomination per person and you must choose one category. If all 12 spots in one category are not filled by January 10th, you can nominate a book for the other category.

-Please specify which category you are nominating for. (Cat 1 or Cat 2) Your post should look something like this:

Category 1: "This Book" by An Author

- Please make sure you have the book and author in your nomination

- Add a blurb of some sort to let us know what the book will be like.

-We will be taking the first 12 nominations for each category or we will close nominations on January 20th if not all categories are filled.

-Voting will begin soon after nominations are done and will be open for a week or so.

- If your book wins, please let us know whether or not you would like to lead the book discussion. It is not required by any means that you lead it.

Category Two: The Tightrope Walker by Dorothy Gilman

So, I'm in love with Dorothy Gilman, and especially this book. It's such a quick read and SO good! Gilman doesn't get even close to the amount of love she deserves for all her books - and I'm ashamed to say I've only read three of them. I'm working on getting to the rest!

Anyway, here's the official blurb...

When quiet, shy Amelia Jones reads a desperate message that has fallen out of a barrel organ in the antique shop she just bought, she can't forget the words, "They're going to kill me soon..." Armed only with the woman's first name and the note written years before, Amelia begins a journey into the past, a search that takes her from the protective cocoon she's wrapped herself in to a precarious world where nothing is the way it seems, where fear is second nature, and dark secrets just might uncover murder--her own...

Category 1 Nomination!
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

A stunning debut novel in which a single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter's life, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can't believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who's never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate's faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.

Seemingly unable to cope with what she'd done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of "spontaneous" suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:

She didn't jump.

Sifting through Amelia's emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall's roof that day-and why she died.

Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It's about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.

Category 1: Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

In 1940 after the first book ends, Jacob and his new Welsh island friends flee to London, the Peculiar capital of the world. Caul, a dangerous madman, is Miss Peregrine’s brother, and can steal Peculiar abilities for himself. The Peculiars must fight for survival, again.

This is book 2 of the series but since book 1 was already a group read, thought I would go ahead and nominate book 2.

Category 2: Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeys across the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother's dying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman begins to echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Mary gradually finds herself ensnared in the dark schemes being enacted behind its crumbling walls -- and tempted to love a man she dares not trust.

we have 2 nominations for each category. Nominations end Monday. Feel free to nominate something for the other category if you already have a nomination, or for both if you haven't nominated yet!

Any last minute nominations? I will be doing the polls this afternoon. Have about 2 or 3 hours.

Polls are up for voting!